


you know it’s awful but you should have chosen other paths

by AuroraWest



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Canonical Character Death, Complicated Relationships, Dysfunctional Family, Family Issues, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Mother-Son Relationship, Post-Thor: The Dark World, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:13:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26071696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraWest/pseuds/AuroraWest
Summary: They didn't tell Loki that his mother was dead until halfway through the funeral. He hasn't been able to pay his respects. Maybe she doesn't even want them, after what he did.
Relationships: Frigga | Freyja & Loki (Marvel), Loki & Odin (Marvel), Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 71
Collections: Bad Things Happen





	you know it’s awful but you should have chosen other paths

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an angst prompt from @franniebanana on tumblr - “thank you for not giving up on me."
> 
> Also fills the Bad Things Happen Bingo square: self-loathing.

Loki hardly needed to think about maintaining Odin’s image anymore.

At first, he had been on edge all the time. Nervous, and anxious about being nervous. Odin wasn’t nervous. Odin was in command, always. He showed no doubt, no hesitation. No anxiety that he was ever wrong.

If anyone could have benefited from some second-guessing, it was Odin. Sometimes Loki felt like he’d gotten all of it in his family: every ounce of self-doubt, self-loathing, insecurity and uncertainty. Odin and Thor had absolutely none and could have used it the most. His mother had the positive versions of those things. Reflection, introspection, circumspection. If only she had passed any of it along.

Loki brought his skiff to a slow stop, letting it glide over the water until it crawled to a halt. Here, far away from the city, between Einherjar patrols, out of sight of everyone, he allowed his glamor to drop. He looked at his hands and didn’t recognize them for a moment. Long-fingered, bony, pale, his veins blue under his skin. _His,_ not Odin’s. Smooth, instead of wrinkled and mottled with age spots. He had always thought he took after his mother in appearance. He had always seemed to have her long, slender fingers.

Now, of course, he knew it was impossible that he took after her in appearance. In temperament, yes.

What was he thinking? In temperament, not at all. Hadn’t he just admitted that to himself? Frigga had been wise, intelligent, considering. The perfect queen. If only her influence had been greater on Odin; greater on Thor. If only Loki had developed an ounce of her grace.

Loki released his hold on the skiff’s rudder and moved to the front of the craft, placing his hands on the edge and peering over the side. He had brought the skiff to the very end of the world. The roar of the water tumbling over the side of the planet drowned out the possibility of all other sound. If an Einherjar patrol approached, he would never hear them coming. But he knew exactly how long he had; how long he could stay here.

Mist rose around him, the water evaporating far below as it hit the barrier between Asgard’s atmosphere and space. Most of the vapor rose into the craggy underside of the planet, pooling in underground springs before eventually bubbling up in the deep forests or high in the mountains, hundreds or thousands of years later. The water going over this edge right now might not see the light of day for another five thousand years. Loki could well be dead before the cycle completed itself, waterfall to vapor to cavern to spring.

Then again, Loki was supposed to be dead right now, so saying something like this was either very obvious or patently untrue. He couldn’t decide.

The rest of the vapor would form clouds, then eventually rain—the rain that Thor would cause when he summoned thunder and lightning, were he here. Which he wasn’t. Loki had sent him away. He couldn’t have Thor here.

He remembered the way Thor had looked at him on Svartalfheim, the way Thor had held him, like they were still brothers. As though everything hadn’t been poisoned. It was. It had been—by Odin, by Thor, by Loki himself.

At that thought, he closed his eyes, listening to the deafening roar of the water. It didn’t even sound like water, it was so loud. It sounded like the howl of creation—or destruction.

Odin, Thor, Loki. Placing himself last in that list made him sound the least culpable. But he was the most, wasn’t he? Simply by virtue of who and what he was, he was the most culpable: God of Mischief, God of Lies, and Chaos, and Destruction. Of Making The Worst Possible Decision, of Setting Things In Motion And Watching Them Blow Up In His Face.

If Thor knew what he’d done, if Thor knew it was Loki who was responsible for their mother’s death, he would never have held Loki that way. He may have run Loki through with the Kursed’s blade himself.

Loki opened his eyes. He hadn’t come here to think about Thor. He had come here to say good-bye to his mother.

The fact that they hadn’t told him until the funeral still made him burn with rage and humiliation. No, he hadn’t been her son, not really, not technically ( _And that was the last thing you shouted at her, wasn’t it? The last words your mother heard out of your pathetic mouth were rejecting her_ ).

Maybe he hadn’t technically been her son. But in all the ways that mattered, hadn’t he been? She had reassured him that despite his birth, despite his monstrous origins, she was his mother. Even after…the Fall, after Midgard, after being forbidden to see him, she’d disobeyed Odin’s orders and made time for him. She’d still looked after him, even though it was the last thing he wanted, let alone deserved.

When the guards had lowered the forcefield of his cell for the first time and brought in a chair, an ottoman, a table, and then a bed, Loki had glowered at them. “What’s this?” he had sneered.

The captain on duty had looked at him as the rest of the Einherjar had trooped out and the forcefields had gone back up, and then he’d tossed a bag onto the table. The bag had thumped heavily and Loki’s eyes had flicked to it, then back to the captain.

“The Queen sends her regards,” he’d said.

Loki had been sitting on the floor, legs crossed, hands in his lap, but at this, he’d risen to his feet. “The _Queen?_ ” he’d repeated. “Her regards?”

The captain had glanced out through the glowing forcefield at the dark corridor outside. “I don’t know anything about it,” he’d said, before lowering the forcefield and stepping out.

Loki had waited for them to go, and then he’d approached the table, with the bag sitting on top of it. Hesitantly, he’d tugged at it. Soft leather. Calfskin. Scuffs on the bottom. It was his; he’d had it since he was a boy.

The other inmates—gods, what a terrible collection of words, _other inmates_ —had been watching through the forcefields, trying to see what he’d been given. They’d already jeered at him because of who he was; now they’d be envious, as well. They’d wanted it both ways—to delight in how the mighty had fallen, and to mock him for being soft, for being unable to do without the creature comforts that he was used to as the prince.

So he’d brought the bag back into the tiny bathroom, with its shower-head bolted to the wall next to the toilet, and he’d dug through the bag. Books. A journal. Pens. Clothes. An anxiety that he’d barely wanted to admit was there calmed. He’d been afraid he’d lose his mind within the week in this terrible place with nothing to divert him; nothing to do, no way to escape the incessant thoughts scrabbling around inside his head, circling his skull. Some days, when he started from fitful, shallow sleep, he’d still felt confused; unsure of who he was. He had begun to realize that the pretty stone in the scepter hadn’t merely been a pretty stone.

Loki’s fingers had closed around something at the bottom of the bag and he’d drawn it out. It was a toy, a small bear, a miniature of the war bears that Asgard sometimes used in battle, that he’d had since he was a child. The paint was worn off where it had taken the most abuse—its nose, its ears, its feet and tail.

Something had stung behind his eyes. Quickly, he had shoved the bear back to the bottom of the bag before he forgot that he didn’t have the luxury of crying, not anymore. He was no longer that Loki. That Loki had died when he’d fallen from the Bifrost—or perhaps even earlier. Perhaps he’d died in the weapons vault when Odin had revealed what Loki truly was. When Loki had called himself _the monster parents tell their children about at night_ and Odin hadn’t denied it.

The sound of the falls brought him back. This wasn’t what he’d come out here for, either. He didn’t have time to stay indefinitely. The Einherjar patrol would be by soon. Anyway, there was no point in staying. He’d thought perhaps the roar of the water would drown out his thoughts, but as it turned out, nothing could drown out his thoughts. Death, perhaps. He had looked forward to it, almost, on Svartalfheim. And then he’d woken up.

Frigga hadn’t. When the Kursed had stabbed her, she had died. It was just as Odin had said—they were born, they lived, they died. For some of them, the death came far too soon. And Loki didn’t understand why he wasn’t dead and his mother, the person who had least deserved to be cut down, was.

He thought, perhaps, it might be because of him. Because she had loved him and he had never deserved it. Because he poisoned everything he touched. His family had been riven, torn to shreds, and he was the cause. Of course he was the cause.

Loki took a breath and stepped back from the edge of the skiff, then cast his eyes outward. Dusk was falling and stars were beginning to shine clear and bright in Asgard’s sky. From where he was, the sky was almost all around him, the stars blooming to life above, below, and before him. The sky had been all around him when he’d fallen, too. He’d thought it was going to be the last thing he saw: Asgard’s stars. He had been at peace with that. He had given up, and if he closed his eyes and knew stars were on the other side of his eyelids, that wasn’t so bad.

Another breath. The patrol would be along soon. He needed to do what he’d come here to do. Even wearing his Odin glamor, his presence there would be puzzling enough to warrant discussion among the Einherjar, which would become discussion amongst the palace staff, and then the people. And he didn’t want people discussing him. Odin. Whatever.

Loki held his hands out, breathing in. An orb of light appeared in his palms, glowing with white, soft light. Warmth in the swiftly falling darkness, a tiny star, a beacon against the black. He hadn’t been informed of his mother’s death until during the funeral. He hadn’t been able to honor her.

He didn’t know if she’d even want him to, after what he’d done.

Cupping his hands around the orb, he looked up at the sky, where the stars that lit Valhalla were winking into view. The falls thundered around him, but he still opened his mouth to speak. “Frigga, I bid you take your place in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave shall live forever.”

The roar of the water snatched the words from him, but he could hear his voice ringing in his head. The important thing was to say the prayer, not to be heard—not, at least, by anyone in this realm. “Nor shall we mourn but rejoice for those that have died the glorious death.”

His shoulders dropped as he breathed out. Then, he lifted his hands. The orb drifted from his palms, up into the night sky. Another star amidst all the others.

Loki swallowed hard and let his arms drop to his sides. “Thank you,” he added. This wasn’t part of the prayer, but he had to say it. He still couldn’t hear himself over the sound of the water. He hoped she could. “Thank you for not giving up on me.”

Everyone else had. Loki certainly had. Perhaps he’d been the very first to give up on himself.

The orb of light winked out, or perhaps it was simply impossible to pick out amongst the other stars. There was a tightness in Loki’s chest. A sting in his eyes. He reminded himself he didn’t cry, and he had to dig his fingernails into his palms to remind himself again, with more force.

Then, he turned to the skiff’s controls and started it. To the port side, he could see the lights of the approaching Einherjar patrol. It was time to go.

He kept the skiff’s lights off and turned back towards Asgard.

Before he’d gone more than a few hundred feet, he recast his glamor.


End file.
